Waking at night is normal

The evidence that waking is expected, and may even be protecting your baby.

The short version

Always place your baby on their back for every sleep, never fall asleep with them on a sofa or armchair, and never shake a baby.
Waking at night is normal and may be protecting your baby: it is not a fault in your child or anything you caused.
Not sleeping through showed no link with mental development, motor development or maternal mood, at 6, 12 or 36 months.
Switching feeding method or starting solids early will not stop night waking, and nothing else belongs in a bottle.
"Sleeping through the night" has no agreed definition, so it works badly as a pass or fail test. Talk about longer stretches instead.

The rest of this page explains where this comes from. You do not have to read it tonight.

About 5 minutes to read

Waking at night is normal, and it may be protecting your baby

Babies are built to wake. It is not a fault in your child, a sign you have done something wrong, or a habit that crept in.

The Baby Sleep Information Source (BASIS) puts it plainly: "Arousal from sleep is thought to be an important mechanism protecting babies from potentially fatal heart-rate or breathing episodes associated with SIDS. Encouraging long and deep periods of sleep before babies are ready may put some babies at increased risk of SIDS." The Lullaby Trust agrees: pushing a baby towards longer sleep "may affect their ability to wake up if something is wrong."

The waking that exhausts you is part of the design, not a defect in it. That does not make the tiredness easier, and this site takes that seriously on looking after yourself.

The trouble with "sleeping through the night"

This phrase does more damage than almost any other in parenting, because it sounds like one clear milestone and is nothing of the kind.

Henderson and colleagues followed 75 infants in a 2010 study, measuring the three definitions researchers actually use: midnight to 5am, any eight-hour block, and 10pm to 6am, the one that matches when a family would like to be asleep. Half the babies met the first two definitions by three months, but it took until five months for half to meet the 10pm to 6am one. At twelve months, about 15 per cent had still not met criteria 1 or 2, and about 28 per cent still did not meet the 10pm to 6am one.

So when someone asks whether your baby sleeps through, there is no agreed answer, because there is no agreed question. The phrase is worth retiring as a pass or fail test. Talk about longer stretches instead, with the hours stated.

The most reassuring study on this page

Pennestri and colleagues, publishing in Pediatrics in 2018, asked whether uninterrupted night sleep in infancy actually matters. Between 27.9 and 57.0 per cent of six and twelve month olds did not sleep through the night, depending on whether a six-hour or eight-hour block was the definition.

Then they looked for consequences: there was no statistically significant association between sleeping through and mental development, motor development, or maternal mood, at 6, 12 or 36 months.

If you have lain awake worrying that broken nights are harming your child, this is the study to hold on to. It looked for the harm parents are so often afraid of, and did not find it.

Things that will not change night waking

Much well-meant advice is aimed at making a baby sleep longer. Some of it does not work, which is worth knowing before you change anything.

Switching feeding method. Brown and Harries found no difference in night-waking frequency between breastfed and formula-fed babies at six to twelve months. The General Practice Infant Feeding Network concludes that "healthcare professionals should avoid recommending formula supplementation or increased solids as solutions for night waking."
Starting solids early. The NHS is unambiguous: "Starting solid foods will not make your baby any more likely to sleep through the night."
Adding anything to a bottle. UNICEF is clear: "Do not add cereal or any other substance to bottle feeds." Never force a baby to take more feed than they want in the hope of a longer night.

"Sleep regression"

You will see this term everywhere. It is not a clinical one. BASIS states that "the term 'sleep regression' lacks biological basis and simply reflects normal developmental progression."

That does not mean nothing is happening: increased waking around four to five months and again around eight to nine months is real and well documented. What changes is the meaning. It is development arriving, not sleep going backwards, and nothing you did caused it.

"Wake windows"

Also popular rather than clinical. Wake windows do not appear in NHS guidance or in the paediatric sleep literature as a defined concept, so we are not publishing minute-by-minute figures for them. The real idea underneath is sleep pressure: the drive to sleep builds the longer anyone is awake. That is genuine, and it is why a long late nap can make bedtime harder. It does not come with a stopwatch.

Culture, not just biology

Normal infant sleep feels like a problem partly because our expectations were not built around infant biology. BASIS notes that "recent cultural practices surrounding infant sleep can be at odds with our biological needs", and traces the expectation of a solid unbroken night to industrialisation and Victorian medical advice rather than to anything about babies. Anthropologists found the same from the other direction: Mayan parents in one well-known study saw separate infant sleep as neglectful, and Italian parents as unkind.

The line worth keeping is this one, from BASIS: "it may not be the baby that is problematic, but our expectations regarding sleep and babies' needs."

UNICEF adds why that reframing helps: "Accepting this reality can be helpful, as parents are reassured that their baby is normal and they aren't doing anything wrong. It can also relieve the pressure to find 'solutions'."

For scale: in a Lullaby Trust survey of UK parents of under-ones, a charity survey rather than a research study, 59 per cent said their baby sleeps less than four hours at a stretch, while 44 per cent thought their baby ought to be sleeping longer. The distance between those two figures is what this page exists to close.

The rules that are not optional

Almost everything about sleep is your family's choice. These are not.

Always place your baby on their back to sleep, for every sleep, day and night.
Never fall asleep on a sofa or armchair with your baby. If you think you might fall asleep, plan for it and make a bed safer instead.
Never, ever shake a baby. It can cause lasting brain damage or death. If crying overwhelms you, put your baby somewhere safe such as their cot, walk away for a few minutes and come back calmer.

Full detail: safer sleep for babies.

Where this comes from

NHS, your baby's sleep patterns, newborn sleep ranges, tiny tummies, solid foods and night waking, and the "growing, alert and happy" reassurance test.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Children's Health (NHS), sleep, the hours-by-age table.
Galland et al. 2012, Sleep Medicine Reviews, systematic review of 34 studies, ages 0 to 12: average total sleep and the normal ranges around it, and night-waking ranges.
Pennestri et al. 2018, Pediatrics, the proportion of 6 and 12 month olds not sleeping through, and the absence of any association with development or maternal mood.
Henderson et al. 2010, Pediatrics, the three competing definitions of sleeping through the night and the proportions still not meeting them at 12 months.
BASIS, infant sleep biology, circadian development, sleep cycle length, settling at 3 to 6 months, arousal as protective, and "sleep regression" lacking a biological basis.
BASIS, human culture and infant sleep, the cultural history of expectations and the line about expectations rather than babies being the problem.
The Lullaby Trust, sleep deprivation, the UK parent survey figures, and their statement that around a third of babies will never have slept all night by 12 months.
General Practice Infant Feeding Network, sleep and safe sleeping, Brown and Harries 2015 on feeding method and night waking.
Derbyshire Family Health Service (NHS), baby sleep, increased waking around 4 to 5 and 8 to 9 months.
NHS, separation anxiety, that it commonly emerges between 6 months and 3 years.
UNICEF UK Baby Friendly, night feeding being normal and essential, not adding anything to bottle feeds, and why accepting normal infant sleep relieves pressure.
The Sleep Charity, sleep guidance for ages 7 to 12 and their caveat that the hours are a guide.

Last checked 1 August 2026. This page is general information, not medical advice. If you are worried about your child, speak to your health visitor or GP.